"Four years ago, al-Qaeda appeared to have been destroyed in Iraq. Last week, fighters from the group captured Fallujah, a city where hundreds of Americans were killed or wounded in the last decade fighting the jihadists. How did this stunning reversal of fortune happen?

Like everything else about Iraq, this is a tragic and confusing story. But two points seem clear: First, the Obama administration, in its rush to leave the country, allowed the sectarian Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to undo many of the gains made against al-Qaeda. Second, Iran has waged a brilliant covert-action campaign that turned Maliki and Iraq into virtual clients of Tehran — and in the process alienated Sunnis and pushed them toward extremism.

'What is tragic is that Iraq’s slide toward an Iranian axis and civil war were not only predictable but indeed predicted by Iraq experts within the U.S. government,' laments one former U.S. official. 'Iraq’s current meltdown and its grave implications on U.S. national security interests were entirely avoidable.'"

Iraq? Although the US should never have gone in under Bush, Obama has indeed made the worst of a bad situation.

Thomas Friedman's "Arab Spring"? Welcome to the Ice Age. Notwithstanding repeated attempts by The New York Times to link the chaos in the Middle East to Israeli obstinacy involving negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/thomas-friedman-not-just-about-us-its.html), the reality is that Israel has very little to do with the chaos which has arisen since Obama first took office.